Thursday, January 23, 2014

In case you have forgotten, India are still world champions. MahendraSingh Dhoni and
his merry band of men will continue to be championstill another
team will be anointed on March 29, 2015. But for now,Indians have
slid from the No.1 pedestal in ODI rankings with theirfourth
successive defeat (and all away from home) on Wednesday inSeddon Park in
Hamilton.

The margin of defeat should not rankle us. But losing first to aformidable
South African (in Johannesburg by 141 runs and in Durban by134 runs) and
now to an eighth ranked New Zealand in a row (24 runs inNapier and 15
runs in Hamilton) should irk us. Is there anything goingwrong?

It was a match that India should have won, given how things pannedout. As usual
Virat Kohli (78 off 65 balls) was brilliant. And he waslucky too.
Rubbing shoulders with the Indians, the Kiwis let theirfielding slip
many notches down. First Kohli was dropped, then Dhoniwas put down.
Suresh Raina was let off to regain his crease. Therewere many such
signs of the hosts wilting under the lights.

That India had to score an additional 26 runs for victory than the 271posted by New
Zealand once the Duckworth-Lewis rules applied cannot bebandied about
as an excuse. In a small ground, big-hitting couldalways win the
day. With five wickets in hand and 40 runs requiredfrom 18 balls a
win was still possible. The reason, skipper Dhoni wasstill around,
tacking his chances. But an unusually nervy Kiwisfinally regrouped to dismiss
Dhoni (56 off 44b) with Williamsoncompleting the catch off
Corey Anderson.

Dhoni in fact tried all that he could do. He juggled around hisbowlers,
bringing in seven of them to stem the run flow. But certainthings you
can’t budget for such as the innings by Corey Anderson whenthe youngster
hammered five sixes to log 44 off 17 balls. It helpedthe Kiwi cause
that Kane Williamson (77 off 87 balls) played the partof No.3 in a
responsible manner.

With eight overs less to play in the rain-curtailed match, Dhoni didthe right thing
by promoting himself to take control of the innings(India 127/3 in
23.4 overs). With Virat and the skipper at the crease,the chase was
on. But they could not make the difference to India’stask at hand.
It was a collective failure. None of the Indian batsmencould act as a
cornerstone to turn the match around. All of themtried, tried hard,
including Suresh Raina but did not succeed. Therelies the problem. And it is
much bigger than losing the No.1 tag.

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About Me

John Cheeran is an engineer-turned-journalist and has worked in such diverse media as Print, Internet and Radio. Cheeran has an abiding interest in cricket and its politics, and in politics in general.
Cheeran quit an Indian arm of the US-based global giants General Electric in 1994 to join Asian College of Journalism. He then went on to write on sports, and mainly on cricket, for newspapers such as The Indian Express, The Asian Age, The Pioneer and www.timesofindia.com in India. Cheeran also had a seven-year stint with Gulf News in Dubai.
He also wrote regularly for regional publications including Malayala Manorama and Deshabhimani during his student days.
During his career, Cheeran has reported a string of national and international tournaments including the 1999 Cricket World Cup held in England, the annual Dubai Desert Classic Golf Championship and Dubai Tennis Championship in Dubai, the ICC Champions Trophy in Dhaka, the Independence Cup Cricket Championship in India, Asian Test Championship and a number of Davis Cup ties in India. Now, Cheeran is an adjunct faculty at Online Media Centre in Chennai.